Wednesday, July 04, 2007

Okay, okay, okay, I'll write a blog post about this. :) I usually don't put much in the way of personal stuff up here, as it's not really of interest to the wide world, and most people I know get to hear about my riveting life (ha!) in person.

So, some backstory. Last year, I took a trip with my dad to New York City and got a chance to snap about a brazillian photos of the place -- it's an extremely photogenic town. I ended up with a candid shot of Samuel Jackson, an illustration of me in Time magazine, and a whole slew of other awesome photos. And now, it seems, I ended up in a major motion picture. :)

Basically, our hotel was across the bay (Jersey side) from the WTC construction site, and getting to Manhattan meant riding the PATH to the WTC station. (This was a surreal experience in itself, as the train circled the entire perimeter of where the buildings were, and you ended up looking out into a massive hole of construction.) While we were at the WTC site, my dad noticed that there was some kind of press conference being set up. It turned out to be Pataki -- and since I was in NYC to take photos of anything halfway interesting, I figured the NYC governor would make a nice snap. Of course, I had to shoot from outside the fence, as the public weren't allowed into the "public press conference"; only the press was.

So anyhow, the other day I downloaded the torrent of SiCKO. Normally I don't download online movies, as it's a good way to end up on the other end of a lawsuit barrel, but the film's creator, Michael Moore, had already said publicly that he didn't give a fig if people downloaded it online. Good on you, fine sir! About an hour and 36 minutes into the movie, they cut to a Pataki press conference at the site of the former WTC buildings -- and I said to myself, "self, that looks just like the press conference I stumbled on!". And then, suddenly, I'm having an out of body experience:

Yup! That's me on the left, with my telephoto wedged through the gap in the fence. My dad is the dude in the background with the sunglasses, craning his neck to see what's going on. They actually start out with a zoom on me, then pan out and to the right. NYC is truely a hub of media -- on just the first day wandering around, I ended up in a movie, in a magazine, and getting a picture of a A-list movie actor. And on top of it all, you can hardly drop your camera there without taking a great photograph. :)